


moonsetter

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Albafica's Gaiden, Albafica's POV, Alternate Ending, Canon Divergence, Domestic, Family Tropes, Fix-It, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Oneshot, aiacos kagaho and minos are basically cameos tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24550420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: Pefko shows Albafica what the consequences of Sir Luco's healing really are. They're caught, but instead of killing them, Luco remembers in time that they're the only family he has left. And thus, fate loves them a little more.
Relationships: Pisces Albafica & Dryad Luco, Pisces Albafica & Pefko
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	moonsetter

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. After so much angst I finally did something soft. Read Alba's gaiden (knew the spoilers, hadn't sat down and read it), stance only grew firmer on the following things: 1) Pefko's perfect, 2) still don't like shialba, 3) they did Luco dirty. So I fixed it.  
> The title's from an 8bit instrumental song on my phone that I actually don't know where it came from, otherwise I'd link it, because it's probably niche. Might still be on youtube, though.

The voice behind him was quiet, soft, and yet somehow unforgiving. "Now, I see. That's why you kept pretending to help me and instead kept mixing other herbs with mine, Pefko." Albafica whipped around, somehow unsurprised by Sir Luco, gentle Sir Luco who had been so kind, standing behind him; and yet a pang of wet anger drove its way into his stomach. Luco smiled, dipping his head slightly. "Indeed, the last group of Spectres has been lacking in quality."

"Master Luco…" Pefko whispered, and the horror and betrayal on the boy's face was all the more painful than what Luco had been doing. He'd started to cry a few moments earlier, when the patients had been transformed, but now his tears were doubling. Luco raised his head ever so slightly, his auburn bangs against the moonlight almost transforming him into something more like a child's horror story. He had seen Master Lugonis that way, a few times, when he needed to scare someone properly. A second pang of wet anger wedged its way into his heart.

"I never thought you'd betray me, Pefko… That's a pity." Luco stepped forward in the moonlight, and his eyes were dark with anger, dark with an emotion less recognizable. He raised a hand, glittering with black cosmos. He had been so sure the man couldn't burn cosmos at all, and yet… He was Lugonis' twin. Of course he could. " _River Lethe Rose_."

The last thing he remembered was white, and the panicked thought that he needed to get Pefko out of there.

Albafica awoke to a wooden roof above him, and the feeling of being tucked tightly into bed. He tried to sit up, finding abruptly that he couldn't – he was under a blanket, yes, but above that were tight ivy-vines, restraining him to what he had first taken to be a bed, and what actually looked to be some sort of mossy, wooden structure, blooming with small flowers. His next thought was that he wasn't in his Cloth: no, he wore his gambeson, fortunately the more comfortable of the two he'd worn that day. He started to thrash, trying to shake off the vines, trying to find a way out. Pefko was in danger, his Cloth was missing, and he was fairly certain Luco was actually a Spectre.

He caught a flash of orange hair, and noted that Pefko was a few feet away, restrained in a similar mossy structure and tucked in not with a blanket, but with Luco's robe-jacket. He clung to it in his sleep, occasionally chewing at the collar. The sight of the boy unharmed was enough to calm him down slightly – enough to notice the warmth at his abdomen, to see the Pisces Cloth in totem form, resting against him, its cosmos solidly between 'inconvenienced' and 'miffed'. He jerked one arm around until he could place both hands on it, stroking its dorsal fin, murmuring something reassuring in the old Gaeilge until its cosmos settled back into neutrality, with a touch of questioning blue.

"We'll make him stop this madness," Albafica murmured to it, hoping that would answer the unspoken question. He didn't actually expect the Cloth to reply.

"To be quite honest, much as I hate to be in this position, I would like to see you try," answered Luco. Albafica looked up, still restrained, and there he was at the stove, shuffling around with a pan. He could see a metal kettle on the stove as well just past the man's arm – what exactly did he have in mind for his new prisoners? Albafica would go down fighting before he became a Spectre. Luco opened his mouth to speak again, and this time, his voice was firmer, more bitter. "I don't want to kill either one of you, if I can avoid it. It would be a waste to kill my adopted son after I've spent so long raising and loving him. Nor do I have much interest in killing my late brother's only son." His voice caught ever so slightly on the word 'late' – even now, he disliked admitting it.

Luco turned to face him, and with him, he brought a serving platter of what seemed to be a breakfast of eggs and fried meat. He set one of the plates down just beside the Pisces Cloth. He focused on the floor beside Pefko for a moment, and wooden roots bloomed on the spot, rising to provide a small table to put a second plate down on, within Pefko's arms-reach. Luco himself sat down, with a chair growing in place to support him – some form of telekinesis, he was sure.

"So let's cut the nonsense out and be honest," he said, and even on that dark evening when Lugonis had asked if he wanted the Red Bond, he had never heard a voice so unforgiving. He might actually die here, in this island of lilies. It wouldn't be a very smart way to go. "You have metal shackles around your ankles and your wrists, and woven through your bed. All of which deaden both cosmos and magic. My lilies counter your poison, doubly so here where I've spent years growing them. You are restrained to a bed I control, and I can take away your cloth. I put them beside you partially because they are very loud in complaining, and partially because I thought it might soothe you."

He blinked. "Can I at least sit up to look you in the eye, or to eat?" he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. He learned it from Manigoldo, though he recalled his Master having a very dry wit with the other Gold Saints.

Luco flicked his wrist, and the structure bent at his waist to allow him to sit up, Pisces shifting down to settle against his hip. The vines shifted their grip enough to allow him movement from the elbow down, and he picked up the fork to begin eating some of the eggs, which were cooked painfully the same way as Master Lugonis. But not quite so painful – he would have given up quite a bit to hear his voice, feel his cosmos, and taste his cooking again. This was as close as he might ever get.

Luco watched him eat impassively, sipping his tea and looking rather calm about the situation. He had the right to be calm about it – after all, he had them both ensnared. When he was finished, still noting the tang of herbs on the meat, the very same blend from his childhood; he looked up again distrustfully. "So what's your plan now?" he asked. "If you're not going to kill us both, that is. The moment I get free of this, I will be stopping you."

Luco offered a twitch of the corner of his mouth, and his eyes narrowed. "Again, I'd like to see you try. Though I'm sure you don't expect it of Spectres – bestial and unpleasant things, as I'm sure you've been told – I was hoping to try reason. Though I do feel obliged to mention that as a healer, it is part of my responsibility to sedate a fussy patient if their condition is too fragile and they do not stop trying to escape." He gestured to his desk, where a tall glass held several pale, pinkish-violet roses. He had the very same variety in his own garden, though he was currently incapable of doing anything with them. River Lethe Roses – nonfatal, barely poisonous, meant only to knock someone out for several hours. Terribly handy when aim wasn't going to be guaranteed. But also rather annoying, if you couldn't combat them. He vaguely recalled Luco murmuring the incantation, before he'd passed out. It explained how he did it.

He looked up, wrenching his gaze away from the roses. "You were trained as a Pisces Saint," he said, quietly, not in judgment but in observation. He hadn't even known. Master Lugonis hadn't mentioned that he had family, or what it had truly cost to be a Pisces Saint at all.

Luco dipped his head. "Sanctuary didn't want two of us. I don't particularly want to go into details, but it was the last time I was allowed to see my brother. We kept in touch, but that was all we could afford. He refused to entertain the idea of breaking rules. I admit, Sanctuary's hold on him was good… I would admire it, if it weren't so repulsive." He sighed, and set down his tea. "If I had a better cure for your poison than Spectrehood, I would offer that, as well. But all I have is the one that cuts Athena the deepest."

"Do you need to disrespect my Goddess like that?" he asked dryly, not really expecting an answer to such a rhetorical question.

"The goddess who cast our own Master aside because she thought we would be better, who cast me out, and then murdered my brother, using his only son as a weapon? I think I am allowed that courtesy," Luco countered. Albafica flinched. It hurt more than he expected, to be referred to in such a manner. It struck deep, and deeper still were Pisces' stars, glittering in quiet agreement and heavy dislike, as though agreeing with his points even though it didn't consider him worthy of its attention. Its cosmos flared, for a moment, and then it appeared at the foot of the 'bed', helmet pointed towards Luco.

He eyed it, and then nodded after a moment. "You're as complicit in the murder of my brother as Athena is, and more so than this young man here. You _should_ remember me, Pisces Cloth."

Pisces flared its cosmos again in annoyance and… scorn, almost. Luco raised an eyebrow. "Really? That's not very kind of you to say."

"You can understand them?" Albafica asked, almost enthralled. He could get their general emotions, and from that a blurry picture of their opinion on a situation, but he would never be able to make out words. Shion would be the person to ask, for that.

Luco looked up. "Our Master taught us. We spent hours in the garden by the fountain, talking back and forth with him as a translator. He was the best at it. They're telling me that if I'm so angry, perhaps I should have taken his place as the Saint. Not that Lugonis would have let me, but they're pointing it out. More to be rude, than anything else. Pisces can be a little temperamental."

Pisces' cosmos flared with annoyance, and they vanished again, abruptly reappearing by Albafica's hip. Luco leaned back in his still-growing chair, and sighed. "I really do want to save you, if you'll let me try."

"I didn't watch Master Lugonis die just to let you make me a Spectre," he answered, mirroring Luco's unforgiving tone. "If I wanted to be a Spectre, I would have done it while he was still beside me. He gave me the poison and his blood. The least I can do is hold onto them." He glowered at him, forcing the vines to give way enough to pick Pisces up. Most people had stuffed animals, when they didn't have actual company. He had a metal fish, and he'd be damned if it wasn't comforting to hold, burning as warm as it did.

Luco looked at him, and opened his mouth to speak when Pefko stirred. Both men stopped to look in his direction, and Albafica noted that Luco's cosmos was as worried as his own. Pisces looked on impassively – it didn't care one way or another about the boy's existence, it cared about results, which meant killing Luco. As he didn't really intend on that quite yet, it was just going to wait until he did. Pefko, too, immediately started struggling against his restraints. Albafica felt a flare of Luco's cosmos, and the vines around Pefko loosened until he too could sit up. He grabbed the plate without acknowledging either one, eating as fast as he could. When he was done, seemingly ten seconds later, he looked around at the both of them.

"Master Luco, are you going to kill us?" he asked, and his voice was painfully frightened, like he'd just noticed his restraints and the two men in the room.

"Not if I don't have to," he answered, and even Albafica could hear the all-too-real pain in his voice. "Albafica and I were just discussing the Pisces Cloth's opinion of me, which is poor, and unfairly so."

"You keep turning people into Spectres. I would expect it to be annoyed with you," Albafica deadpanned. "You're making me have to do a lot of unnecessary work that would have been avoided had you not decided to blame Lady Athena for something nobody could control." The conversation was not unlike sticking thorns in his arms for the fun of it, which was also an activity he didn't enjoy whatsoever. He almost wished it was Shion being ballsy and rude. It still poked at things he didn't want poked, but at least he generally could do something about it.

Luco paused. "Ah, yes. I never did explain to you why I became a Spectre. To be honest, I don't expect you to actually listen ordinarily. Having you restrained does seem to be working in my favour."

Albafica glowered at him, and Pefko looked upset and depressed. Then he looked up, wet anger turning to worry turning halfway to fury. "I have a question."

"Go on." Luco eyed him warily.

"Are you _sure_ your lilies completely neutralize my poison in here?" he demanded. He was less angry and more wanting to be sure – he'd blame it on the roses if he was ever asked again.

Luco didn't roll his eyes, but the twitch of his jawline said he was debating it. "Obviously. I would be stupid not to ensure that."

Albafica stared him down. Here was the difficult part: lying to his face, and getting him to believe it. He hadn't been very good at lying to Master Lugonis, who always saw right through him and laughed about it. "Good. I don't really care about how you became a Spectre, but telling me seems to be what'll make you feel better about your own crimes." He narrowed his eyes. "But if you release Pefko from your vines and let him come to me, I'll listen."

Luco blinked in surprise, but nodded all the same. He rose from his chair and stepped over to Pefko's 'bed', lifting him easily up out of it. Pefko, for his credit, wrapped his arms around his neck and clung to him with the desperation of a child who wanted his family to come home. Unfortunately, Albafica could relate, and the gesture alone turned a bad morning into a worse one. Luco set him down atop Albafica's lap, removing his empty plate to discard it onto the desk for now. Pefko was almost as warm as Pisces, and immediately clung to him. He was expecting it, but he still flinched, but pulled him closer all the same. It was almost physically painful, less so than when Shion grabbed him and more so than he expected, but Pefko needed the reassurance, and if there was safety to do so, he was taking it. Pefko reached down and picked up Pisces, whose cosmos indicated mild disinterest in the situation but consented to being held all the same.

Pefko burrowed his way into Albafica's chest, clinging to the hem of his rough linen shirt, which was coarse gambeson and not at all comfortable to lay on, but hanging onto him all the same. He glanced up at Albafica, child's-blue eyes blinking in worry, and then glanced over at Luco, whose face was a thin, flimsy mask over obvious, real pain. Albafica could see it in his eyes – the same pain that had been in Master Lugonis' eyes the night of the first Red Bond – and some part of him ached to fix it. Most of him, actually. There wasn't anything else to do, and for once, he wasn't at risk of killing anyone. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and beckoned to him.

He felt Luco's cosmos through the air, sensing him move closer until he could feel a slight, warm pressure against his ribs, and the vines around him released in full. He felt Luco shift to sit on the side of the bed, his touch gentle, like he knew exactly how much trust he was being given, and how much he didn't deserve it right now. But he stayed where he was, barely holding him at all, and when Albafica opened his eyes he was watching him, scanning his face for anything that would tell him to stop.

"What happened?" he asked, and his voice was much more fragile than it had been a moment ago, Pefko watching them both with a worry that spoke of how much he didn't understand. And Luco told them.

When all was said and done, he agreed to stay the night and collect his thoughts. This was going to be a much trickier mission than expected, and involved talking Luco out of his anger against Sanctuary as well as somehow breaking him free of Thanatos' deal, even if he wasn't at all sorry for his actions. He had half a mind to send word to Manigoldo, to see if he wasn't kidding about the whole 'punching death in the face' thing he tended to go off about at length. Luco made them lunch and muttered something about being unsurprised when Albafica admitted he wasn't one for a talent in cooking – apparently Master Lugonis' simple method was one Luco had devised as something he wasn't likely to mess up.

Pefko, in better spirits now that everything had been hashed out and they were working on a solution, was bouncing all around their heels with the wild abandon of a childhood he still yearned for. And every now and then, Luco would pause and raise his arms to each side, and Albafica would take a breath, ready himself, and step closer for a brief, gentle embrace. Luco was never surprised nor offended when he shook his head, still reeling from the previous embrace, but he was patient with him. Each one was slightly less brief than the one before, but Luco smelled almost exactly like Master Lugonis, and they were helping, slowly but surely, until near sunset he stepped over to where Luco was making dinner, and gently put his arms around his shoulders, pressing his face into the messy auburn locks over his shoulder.

Luco leaned back into him, spearing a piece of chicken from the pan with a fork and offering it to him over his shoulder. Albafica took it, finding that Luco was easily one of the best cooks he'd met. Then he took the pan off the stove and went about serving dinner – he admitted that he tried not to heal anyone on his off days except for emergencies, because using his cosmos so much was deeply tiring, even though his job was actually just about getting guards. He refused to go into detail on how the Spectres operated, but mentioned offhandedly that at least he didn't have to, as he put it, 'clock into the office more than once a season'.

Not long after dinner, they had been settled together in what Pefko called a 'blanket fort', which was just Luco's wooden roots holding a structure comprised entirely of pillows and blankets in a sort of nest formation. Luco had looked outside to check the weather and suddenly held very, very still. Albafica looked over, noting the sudden anxiety in his cosmos as he was attempting to convince the Pisces Cloth that being wrapped up in a blanket wasn't the worst possible way to spend the evening. "Is something wrong, Luco?" he asked, settling Pisces carefully into his lap, where it remained, annoyed.

Luco glanced back at him before returning his attention to the window. "I think so. My Surplice has been uneasy, the past hour or so. It's likely I'll have visitors tonight."

Pefko bolted to Albafica's side, hovering a few inches away before Albafica pulled him close, draping a blanket over him and keeping him tight against his ribs. He lowered his voice, wary and almost protective. "What will they have you do?"

Luco paused, turned back at him, and a smile played its way onto his lips. "These are Spectres, not common beasts. They'll want me to put them back together after spending the sundown getting themselves killed and broken into pieces just for the fun of it all. The last time I had Spectres on my doorstep, they had been testing exactly how high of a cliff you need to drop a human off of before they die on impact, using their own immortality as a guide. At this point, I can fix a badly broken spine in my sleep, and they didn't get any smarter from it."

Albafica paused, scanning his eyes to see where the joke was. Once he was sure he was actually telling the truth, he started to laugh. "Are you serious?"

"Dead," Luco answered, smiling right back. "Really. Thanatos gave me a cure for everything I could think of, and yet I still don't have a cure for Spectre stupidity. Nor do I have one for the idiots growing on me, but I suppose that's the consequence of turning my back on Sanctuary. I get to see them without being told what I should be seeing." Once he had explained himself, his speech seemed to grow freer, and even his movements felt looser, more relaxed. He seemed to have settled into his skin a little more, and even Pefko seemed cheerier. Albafica had listened, as best he could.

There was no way anyone could have told him how to handle something like this. All Spectres were to be exterminated when found, no ifs, no buts. There was no mission that required their cooperation: if it couldn't be done without them, it was to be done without them anyway. There was no working with the enemy. And yet, he couldn't really force himself to do it. Luco had acted to the best of his ability, accepting the consequences with grace and offering to help find a solution that wouldn't get Albafica in trouble. There was no way to remove the evil star around the island without Luco either being dead, somewhere else, or somehow renouncing being a Spectre. He didn't think that was going to be easy, and he wasn't sure how he would even go asking for help.

He still didn't want to kill him. Maybe if Luco had done something worse, had attacked Pefko or tried to kill him. But he'd done his best. And if he were honest – not that he'd admit it under pain of death – if he had been offered the same deal as a younger teenager holding his dying master, he would have agreed, too. Lugonis wouldn't have been happy with it, but he would've done it. And he didn't know if Lugonis would have killed him for it, or done what he was now trying to figure out how to do for Luco: saved him.

"Luco, if it isn't pressing too much," he began, unsure. But then again, Pefko was pressed up against his ribs, somehow trying to get into a staring competition with the Pisces Cloth, who was steadfastly ignoring him. "If I were Master Lugonis, and nothing else about this mess had changed, what do you think he would have done?"

Luco blinked, walking over to the blanket fort and settling down. Pefko scooped up a now-very-displeased Pisces Cloth and all but fell over into his lap. Luco automatically started stroking his hair. "If you were Lugonis, and I were still a Spectre, you mean? Hard to say. I hadn't seen him in person in years by the time he was..." Again, a pause. Some things he was still unwilling to talk about. "But if I had to guess, there would be a lot more yelling, at least two fights, and then Pefko would start crying and we'd both feel bad and call a truce long enough to cheer him up, and that would calm Lugonis down enough for me to offer something not half-burnt for dinner, and he'd start interrogating me until I gave up and demanded he sleep on the couch. He wouldn't stay there, but he'd at least try to." Luco wouldn't quite meet his eye, and the feeling inched through him that he was hiding something. Luco was silent for a moment, evidently lost in memories, and Albafica let him.

When he looked up again, it was with a bit more urgency to his tone. "If we get Spectre company while you're here, you need to hide. They know I have Pefko, and they're not worried about him. But they're going to see me in the same room as a Gold Saint who isn't on death's door, and assume you're trying to kill me. I appreciate that you aren't, but they share the Saints' love for their medics, and will drop honour in favour of ensuring you don't hurt me."

Albafica raised an eyebrow. He didn't fancy a fight of four-on-one with Spectres, on Spectre territory. "Do they think you can't defend yourself? If that were so, I'd expect them to leave you a guard."

"No, I can," Luco answered, shrugging. "I shouldn't have to, is the point. If Saints are protective, Spectres are territorial. It's considered a compliment in Spectre terms to accept someone's offer of fighting in your name, which is what they would do. Not so much a compliment if they think you're too weak to defend yourself. It's… complex, how Spectre manners work. I learned mostly by being important enough to insult everyone until I started to understand how they were apologizing for their existences near mine."

Albafica tried to stop the bubbling of laughter in his chest. He failed miserably. "Spectres apologizing? Hades would rule the day."

Luco smiled and held out his arms. Albafica sat up onto his knees and moved over, settling against his chest beside Pefko. Luco's arms settled around him. "They can and they do," he answered softly. "Or rather, we do. But they're not so bad. They're just more honest. I can appreciate that, over Pope Sage withholding information every second sentence he actually says."

Albafica paused. It was true, now that he thought about it. Pope Sage knew who Luco was and had confirmed that he would be there: why hadn't he mentioned Master Lugonis? It bothered him, now that it had been pointed out. Was this some sort of test? He took a breath.

"Either way… I can disguise my Cosmos, but only so much. Wouldn't they notice either way?" he asked. Truth to be told, he didn't actually know that much about how Spectres worked. But he did know they used their cosmos just like Saints, and he expected them to be able to use it to detect the people around them, too.

Luco paused, raised his hand to his lips, and blew a short, sharp whistle. In the corner of the room, the shadows seemed to just shift, growing darker and deeper until he could make out the cold, glittering, jet-black metal of a Surplice. Actually kind of terrifying, now that he was looking at what seemed to be a metal tree-person. Pisces flared with deep, intense disapproval. Pefko clung to it tighter, looking as worried as Albafica felt.

Luco beckoned, and the Surplice was beside them. He hadn't even seen it move, or disappear, or anything – it was just suddenly there. Luco lifted what looked like the helmet – and all of the branches of it – from the Surplice, smiling. "My headdress is big enough to hide just about anything, and any Cosmos coming from under it will be pretty well disguised. I don't think there's anything to worry about, if you pull a blanket over yourself and then hide under this."

Albafica hesitantly took it, and set it gently to rest on one of Luco's wooden roots supporting the blanket fort, within arms' reach if he needed it. He hoped he wouldn't, and when Luco pulled him a little bit closer to his chest in reassurance, he went, leaning his temple against his collar. He stifled a yawn.

"Tomorrow, we'll figure out a plan," he murmured. "But it was nice to take the time to rest, today."

"Will everything be okay, then?" Pefko asked, his arms still around a disapproving Pisces Cloth, who was now pointed towards Dryad and their cosmos was alight with their dislike. When he got home, he'd have no other choice but to give them a proper wash and the good armour polish, just to apologize. "I like helping people. I'm not sure what we were doing was helping."

He felt Luco's grip on them tighten, and he reached over to pull his hand gently away – if his grip was too tight, he'd start feeling like he couldn't breathe even if he could. A tight embrace was still beyond his capabilities for affection at the moment, even if he was fighting down being overwhelmed every single moment he was there. "We were doing what we had to," Luco answered finally, after a moment. "And we'll figure something else out, if we can. I'd rather this not end in someone being dead."

Albafica offered a wry chuckle, and allowed Luco to pull the blankets up on them. Somehow, he'd ended up wearing Luco's robe-jacket. It was incredibly warm and soft, and smelled as much of lilies as Luco himself did. He had just settled into a comfortable position, fully prepared to fall asleep on Luco's shoulder, when there was a sharp rap at the door.

Luco froze, and then rose to his feet, gently dislodging them both. On the other side of the door was a powerful, deeply evil cosmos. Albafica snatched the collar of Luco's robe-jacket and yanked it over his head, reaching for the headdress of Luco's surplice and pulling that over him too. After a split second, he reached for Pefko and his Cloth and pulled them both underneath him, intent on protecting them. Even so, he could see just enough from under the robe-jacket and headdress to see the door past Luco as he opened it.

"Evening, Aiacos," he heard Luco answer wearily. "Have you tried at least being in five pieces when you come to see me, not a dozen?" He was answered with laughter and the evil cosmos stepping past the threshold – the amount of footsteps and the cosmos being so near identified it as three people, one of which that wasn't walking. "Put him down on the chair, I'll get to you two in a moment…"

He felt Luco's cosmos rise as he began to work. From under the headdress, he leaned over ever so slightly, and caught a glimpse of a teenage boy clad in a winged Surplice with two missing legs, grinning merrily even though he was losing an impressive amount of blood. Another cosmos – violent, but not so much evil – settled down on one side of the room, and the third headed towards him.

The third of the Spectres stepped into the blanket fort and lifted the headdress from it, walking back over to Luco. Albafica thought of a prayer that he might not be caught: if he was, they were going to kill him, and there wasn't much he was going to be able to do about it. "You shouldn't leave pieces of your Surplice around, you know that, right?" said a voice, gruff but soft, like a teenage boy who did way too much screaming.

"Pefko was playing with it, as he's rightly allowed," Luco answered, his voice calm and cosmos still flared as he healed. One of the Spectres tsked and stepped back into the blanket fort, dropping their weight almost exactly on top of Albafica's spine. He squawked in pain and abruptly stood up, sending the Spectre to the floor and revealing Pefko. The Spectre was a tall boy, with messy, silver hair and blood splattered across his face. His pale eyes went wide and he jumped back.

The Spectre Luco was healing had regained one of his two missing legs, and the Spectre across the room dropped from atop the counter he'd been sitting on to his feet, flame licking at his Surplice in warning.

"Enough, all of you," Luco said, his voice a conversational tone and his Cosmos anything but. "Minos, don't sit on my nephew. Albafica, don't squawk at our company."

"He sat on me!" Albafica yelped, calling a River Lethe Rose to his hand and pointing it in the direction of the white-haired Spectre.

"I watched him do it, Albafica." Luco's voice shifted from relaxed to steel in a moment – the tone he'd heard from every healer arguing with his coworkers. He usually did his own healing due to the Red Bond, but he knew the tone. "Don't squawk at our guests. And put the rose down. You couldn't beat Griffon Minos in an honest fight, and you certainly can't do it in my house, without your Cloth, even if he's got a broken arm. There's no point in threatening each other."

The white-haired Spectre – Griffon Minos, if he'd heard correctly - stared at him, blinking. The rose vanished with a wisp of smoke and cosmos, and he lowered his hand. And then Griffon Minos blinked again at him, and pitched forward in a dead faint. Albafica jumped out of his way, forcing Pefko to drop his Cloth to catch the Spectre, and allow him to fall much slower onto a blanket.

The two other Spectres stared at the scene, and the one with a missing leg abruptly started laughing. Luco glanced over and shook his head, continuing to heal. Albafica opened his mouth to express confusion, unsure how to phrase it. What came out of his mouth was "I didn't do it," and Luco only started to crack up.

"Yes, you did. Minos has a taste for the finer things. He saw a young man too handsome for him to handle and passed out. He'll do that if we let him. Give him a few moments, he'll come back to his senses or I'm sure someone will dump water on the poor boy." Luco's tone was more teasing than anything, the gentle prodding of a man who loved him as himself. He winced anyway at the compliment – if it could be called that – and glanced around at the two Spectres instead.

"I feel obliged to make introductions," he said, awkwardly. "I'm afraid I don't know who you two are."

The legless Spectre raised a hand. His skin was dark, his Surplice looked to be some sort of bird, and his hair was black. "I'm Aiacos – Garuda Aiacos, and that's Bennu Kagaho. We were trying to cover some of Rhadamanthys' duties and we failed miserably, so he sent us off to get healing before anything else takes a chunk out of us. You've met Minos, clearly." He glanced over at Luco, who was focused on allowing him to regrow his knee, seemingly not in pain. "Hey, Luco. Can we stay for dinner?"

"I think you're pushing it," Bennu Kagaho muttered. He was the one with the gruff, soft voice. He had reclined back onto the counter, the flame around him having died down. "It's rude, you know."

"We've already eaten," Pefko added, and reached over to pick up the Pisces Cloth, who was now breaking its previous record of how dissatisfied it could be with everyone around it. He stroked its dorsal fin, grinning happily. Albafica himself thought he might never be able to resist Pefko the same way – his own fault, then, for quietly wanting a child or several of his own to love and raise. It was an impossible wish to fulfill, but he still wanted it. But a younger cousin was almost as good, and Pefko had the same bright red-orange hair as Lugonis. He was fairly certain Luco wouldn't be too upset if Albafica visited more for the young boy's sake.

Luco rose from his kneeling position, Aiacos' legs now present but bare of anything but an impressive amount of thick, dark hair. He looked almost gleeful, sweeping Luco into a tight hug before stretching out. "So, Gold Fish. I don't think I asked, who the hell are you, again?"

"Gold Fish, obviously," Albafica answered dryly. "Pisces Albafica, at… anyone's service but yours, I should think." Luco shot him a look. He returned a mischievous smile. "I was sent here to rid the island of an evil presence. However, Luco is my uncle, so I may be changing some plans. I would appreciate not being stabbed while I decide on how to do that."

Aiacos laughed. "Become a Spectre, then. We're always recruiting." Luco opened his mouth to scold him, but Albafica was already laughing.


End file.
